18.4 John – Walking in the footsteps

We are called to be followers of Jesus Christ. But I often find myself exactly in the same place as Thomas. I want to know where we are going!

If you think about it, it is a silly request. What am I going to do, figure out a better path to get there than the one Jesus is leading me on? Is it going to get me there better? Faster? Does Jesus need me to navigate for him?

It must be the equivalent to Jesus of someone constantly asking “are we there, yet?”

The analogy I heard the other day that puts this in perspective was a soldier discussing what it was like to walk through a field of landmines. The best approach, he said, is to step directly in the footsteps of the one who knows the true and safe path. Your focus is on the next step, the picking up and putting down, the light on the pathway. You are not concerned with or thinking about “I don’t know the path.” You are following. Your feet go in the footsteps of the one who went before you.

Sometimes we forget that this life is full of landmines and we have the one who knows the only path. He has cleared the path through His sacrifice, even laying down His life. We don’t need to know what God has in mind for us for the future, we just need to know where to put our foot so it lands where Jesus leads.

My Answers:

8.

He is the living God, the son of God, who is not simply part of history, but alive today and coming to earth again to retrieve all who believe in Him and accept His gift of salvation and eternal life in heaven.

9.

He saw Jesus as a separate entity from God, missing the connectivity of the Trinity. He saw Jesus as higher than man, but not equivalent to the Father.

I am blinded by my own self-reliance and plans to pray for direction and wait and listen before moving on.

10.

The word the means exclusivity – there is no other way to God. It is impossible to be a child of God and reject Jesus, the only son of the Father. Any other path is a false path, a path that leads not to life but to death. There are not many paths to Heaven, only one.